Michael Vorfeld, musician and visual artist, based in Berlin, plays percussion and self designed stringed instruments and realises electro-acoustic sound pieces. He works in the field of experimental, improvised music and sound art and is often involved in site-specific art projects. He realises installations and performances with light, works with photography and film. Besides his solo activities he is a member of various ensembles and collaborates with artists from different art forms. His list of activities includes numerous concerts, performances and exhibitions in Europe, America, Asia and Australia.

Light Bulb Music is an audio-visual performance using sounds that are generated by different light bulbs and actuating electric devices. The use of different controllers such as switches, dimmers, relays, flashers and various others leads to changes in the light and the current flow. This is made audible by a range of microphones and pick-ups. In addition, fine mechanical sounds occurring inside the light controllers are amplified and integrated into the music. The changes in the light intensity, the incandescence of the filaments and the rhythmic variety of the flickering and pulsing lights is directly transformed into a comprehensive and microcosmic electro-acoustic world of sound.

Ute Wassermann disguises her voice with a number of palate whistles and birdcalls. She creates hybrid voices evoking strange songs of the human voice and the voices of creatures.

Ute is known as a vocal soloist and composer/performer for her extraordinary, many-voiced and extreme vocal sound-language, which she has brought into experimental/contemporary music in diverse ways. She has developed techniques to “mask” the voice using birdcall-whistles, palate whistles or resonant objects, and designs sound-installations. A particular interest is the development of
compositions for spaces with unusual acoustic qualities.

She studied visual arts (sound installation and performance art) at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Hamburg with Henning Christiansen and Allan Kaprow among others, and subsequently visual art, music and singing at the University of California, San Diego (with a DAAD grant). As a vocal soloist in contemporary and experimental music Ute Wassermann has performed in festivals, galleries and clubs throught Europe and also in Australia and Asia.As an improvising musician she performs regularly with musicians of the London scene and in duos with Richard Barrett, Aleks Kolkowski
and Birgit Ulher, in the quartet “speak easy” (with Phil Minton, Thomas Lehn and Martin Blume) as well as in larger formations such as the octet fOrch or ECIO.

As an interpreter of contemporary music she has given premieres of numerous works composed specially for her voice, for example by Richard Barrett, Chaya Czernowin, Henning Christiansen, Hans-Joachim Hespos, Michael Maierhof, Michael Finnissy and Ana Maria Rodriguez, with the ASKO Ensemble, Elision, Munich Chamber Orchestra, KNM Berlin and others. She has taken part in music theatre productions by Matthias Kaul (Ensemble L’art pour l’art), Salvatore Sciarrino, Gerhard Stäbler and others, and performances with dancers, circus artists and visual artists; pedagogical projects and workshops with her choral composition “mimic” for festivals and cultural institutions.